The Ukraine war has enabled conversations that did not exist before to happen.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, is on a two-day visit to Delhi at the invitation of the external affairs minister S Jaishankar. Seeking India’s support for the upcoming International Peace Summit in Switzerland is the main aim of his maiden visit.
Even though bilateral relations between New Delhi and Kyiv have been friendly and productive around trade and weapons until 2021, things changed drastically after 24 February 2022. However, three years into the war, India’s position on the issue has become more nuanced and so has Ukraine’s.
The thrust is on mapping convergences amid varied divergences—most of all on India’s historical ties with Russia.
Kuleba has appealed to India’s rising stature in the world and invoked geo-political reason and pragmatism by asking New Delhi to play a more significant role in bringing the war to an end. Does that mean that the war itself is coming to an end soon? Unfortunately not.
But it does mean that Ukraine is reaching out to ‘non-West’ countries to engage constructively with a war that, in differing degrees, continues to have profound ramifications for everyone.
What will it take for India to become the first major non-western country, a rising world power with a strong commitment to the ideal of ‘one family, one future’, to shape the realities of post-Ukraine war Europe?
And more importantly, will it work?
There are two distinct strands of looking at Kuleba’s visit.
One is Ukraine’s outreach to India is part of the larger matrix of its rather successful outreach to the so-called ‘Global South’ to build bridges and conversations around the peace plan and the country’s reconstruction.
Second is that Ukraine is building a sustainable quid pro quo with India in terms of trade and other deliverables while respecting the latter’s position on Russia.
This entails the re-vitalisation of the India-Ukraine Intergovernmental Commission which was set up in 1994 but was never really explored. Further, it requires an assessment of opportunities for mutual trade and perhaps a realistic assessment of Ukraine’s ability, ‘in times of cholera’, to deliver on the weapons deals worth crores that the two sides agreed to in 2021.
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International peace summit
First announced in November 2023 at the G20 summit in Bali, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace plan operates on the virtue of pragmatic and collaborative securitisation apart from concrete iterations of Ukraine’s legal boundaries. While there may be obvious no-go zones for India on the questions of Ukraine’s borders as per the UN Charter and International Law—both of which adhere to the 1991 treaties and are rejected by Russia—the 10-point peace plan has several areas that are envisioned on tactical and limited mediation.
Some kosher domains for India’s engagement are commitments to maintaining food security for the world’s poorest nations, energy security with a focus on Ukraine restoring its power infrastructure which has been ravaged by the war, and exchange of war prisoners and return of deported Ukrainian children. Protection of the environment, and demining and restoring water treatment facilities are also explicitly mentioned in the plan.
In Delhi, and among his various engagements, Kuleba has repeatedly underscored how different states can focus on only those aspects of the peace plan where their respective traction would add value. This resilience among key deliverables is an important aspect of how Ukraine is reaching out to the rest of the world. In that regard, it is also mindful of the embedded multi-alignment in the world order and paves a way forward for states to act toward peace-building without violating their core worldview of engaging Russia.
By providing and underscoring this approach toward building peace in a war-ravaged country, Ukraine’s foreign minister has opened the space for performative action and not mere grandstanding.
President Zelesnkyy has also been very active in travelling the world, upping Kyiv’s diplomatic engagement, and asserting his peace plan to far-flung—especially non-West—states to counter Moscow’s political clout across the world.
Part of the reason why this idea has taken hold of the ‘Global South’ better than was expected is also because of the resilience shown by Ukraine in the war despite the lack of ammunition from the West and numerical inferiority. Ukrainian performance in the maritime domain of the Black Sea has also ensured the export of Ukrainian grain to nations that need it the most and has helped bolster the narrative of Ukraine’s legitimate concern for the ‘Global South’.
Recently, Kuleba made a discerning statement. He said that the Global South becomes more balanced in its approach when the situation is more stable across the battlefields (land and sea).
From Ukraine’s perspective, the outreach to India is about constructive engagement of a rising power that has bridged the broken links between East and West and North and South on many occasions. It would be fair to say that Ukraine has got the intersectional global traction of New Delhi right and is now invoking the same to shorten the path towards a solution.
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Does the bilateral dynamic help?
It is important to remember that the logistics of a quid pro quo rides on mutual interests. While India’s engagement with Russia stands on its own terms, New Delhi’s multi-alignment is a pitch-perfect foreign policy tool to act in national interest. India is mindful of Russia’s alignment with China and the inexorable strategic tension it has on India’s core interests.
One of the uncomfortable truths about the prolonged war in Ukraine is Russia’s deepening and asymmetric dependence on China in all spheres of statecraft—from economy to dual-use technology to information systems to cheap energy to weapons exports. Regardless of the ‘outcome’ of the war, it is this strategic deepening that will impact India’s interest in its continental expanse, from the complicated border to its east, to the infuriating backing of Islamabad by Beijing to its west, to the maritime waters of the Indo-Pacific where Russia and China’s ‘Asia-Pacific’ view is out of sync with India’s.
That said, despite the caution, it is very much in India’s interest to re-invent its relationship with Russia to keep its engagement diversified.
Besides, India has always rejected the binary worldview and remains committed to collaborative frameworks to shape relevant conversations.
The outreach by Ukraine provides a ‘tables turned’ opportunity for India to play a role in consolidating a fragile and seething European theatre. It’s a far cry from newly independent India whose fate was decided by colonial masters and its territorial misgivings perpetuated.
What does Ukraine bring to the table?
At the Aero India 2021, India and Ukraine had signed four defence agreements worth Rs 530 crore. Until the war started in 2022, India procured gas turbine engines from Ukraine for its stealth fighters. It’s interesting to note that in 2016, long before the oil re-routing happened because of the G7 price cap and energy sanctions, India was procuring gas turbine engines from Ukraine and transferring them to Russia. This was after tensions escalated between the two neighbours after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
If Ukraine is able to meet the requirements of the 2021 deals and deliver defence equipment to India, especially the various engine platforms and propulsion systems, it will not only build trust but will also speak volumes of its defence industry’s resilience. Subsequently, steps could be taken to further this cooperation within the Atmanirbhar Bharat ideal.
Ukraine is one of the most combat-hardened and ingenuous armed forces in the world. It is fighting and sustaining a war against a much bigger adversary by infusing different technologies at an active and conventional battlefront. These experiences are useful for any military in the world, including India.
Finally, the potential of Indian industries investing in Ukraine’s reconstruction alongside the larger European efforts cannot be overstated. Therein lies opportunities for Indian businesses to also acquaint themselves better with the East European eco-system at a time when India’s engagement with Europe—especially central and eastern Europe—is growing in an unprecedented fashion.
The writer is an Associate Fellow, Europe and Eurasia Center, at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. She tweets @swasrao. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)